


his words did echo

by duckmoles



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Character Study, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 03:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18651538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckmoles/pseuds/duckmoles
Summary: Tony Stark, from the beginning.(Endgame spoilers. Details in the notes.)





	his words did echo

**Author's Note:**

> incredibly spoilery summary: "five times Tony Stark almost died and one time he did." it's almost happy at the end, i promise
> 
> this is, first and foremost, a tribute. tony stark, i love you 3000.

**_One._ **

Afghanistan is hot, the sand shifting and burning under his feet, stripped down to essentials and still feeling the water evaporate from his skin from the heat and dryness. He thinks he might die of dehydration out here, in the middle of nowhere, miles away from any civilization or help, and wouldn’t that just be his luck. Surviving a missile blowing up in front of him, shrapnel burying itself into his chest, open heart surgery in a cave, being kidnapped and held by terrorists for who knows how long, fighting his way out tooth and nail, only to die in the desert, his corpse being picked apart by vultures. His vision is fuzzy, his mouth dry, the sun beating down on him as he stumbles across the landscape. It’s doing wonders for his tan, if nothing else.

It’s not a bad place to die, he thinks.

All his life, he’s never had a moment of alone time to himself, never an ounce of peace or quiet. But here, far from everyone else, far from the world he knew, the quiet is almost calming. Nothing but the sound of his slow shuffling, his clothing shifting against itself, the distant call of birds of prey.

But he can’t. Whenever he closes his eyes, he can hear Yinsen’s voice echoing in his ears. “Don’t waste your life,” Yinsen had said, breath catching in his throat, ready to face death. Willing to face death. Willing to do so to save Tony, of all people. Tony, who’s been the merchant of death for as long as he can remember, who can’t imagine being anything else, who’s killed and slaughtered and murdered who knows how many thousands, even if inadvertently. It was his weapons, his designs, his call. Tony doesn’t know how Yinsen can forgive him for that. He can’t even forgive himself.

Tony has to do him right. He’s not dying here, among the sand and the heat, even if he deserves to. Not when he has to go home and make things better, right his wrongs. He has so much work to do, and dying here, dying like this, would be a disservice to Yinsen. To everyone who’s ever been killed by anything he’s ever created. It would be a reprieve he can’t let himself have.

He squints up at the sun, tugs his jacket tighter over his head, and scans the skyline. Help must be on its way. And even if it’s not, well. If he can build a flying metal suit out of a box of scraps and escape, he can find a way out of this as well. He has to believe in that. He has to believe in something.

And if it has to be the last wishes of a man who’s already dead, then so be it.  

 

**_Two._ **

Tony remembers Obadiah almost better than he remembers his own father. He remembers being four years old and building his first circuit board, Obadiah placing a hand on his shoulder, squeezing tight.

“Nice job, Tony,” Obie had said, voice effusive and warm and welcoming and so, so kind.

“D’you think dad will like it?” Tony had replied, pouting slightly, poking at the tiny thing.

Obie smiled. Tony should’ve known. It had been a wolf’s smile. “I think Howard will love it,” he had said. “Let’s show it to him, hmm?”

Howard hadn’t really cared, not until later when the cameras showed up and the press came knocking and he could show off his brilliant son to the crowd, but Obie had held Tony afterwards, telling him how smart Tony was, how brave, how proud he was of Tony. And when Jarvis tucked him in that night, he had felt pleased, happy even. He’d created something with his own hands, with his own skill and talent. He knew right then there would be no other feeling like this, for the rest of his life.

He stares up at Obie’s face, fighting against paralysis. He’s not sure what he’d do if he was able to move, if he’d attack Obie, if he’d escape, call for the police. He doesn’t want to hurt Obie, who was his father even if sometimes Howard wasn’t.

“This is your legacy,” Obadiah says, and Tony wants to scream. There’s a reason he had to come back home from Afghanistan, why he didn’t kill himself in that cave, why he kept walking in the desert, why he put the armor back on even while memories of being unable to breath flooded his head, why he hasn’t slept in three days. The next mission, and nothing else. This wasn’t even about redemption, had never been. It was about duty, and obligation, and cleaning up the messes he had made.

He couldn’t have this be his legacy.

When Obie leaves, when Tony can breathe again, he crawls down to the workshop, life and limb on the line. If nothing else, he’ll be able to say he tried. He’s so close, but he can’t – he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to make it. There’s not enough strength left in his body.

This can’t be how it ends, and –

DUM-E chirps at him, dangles the arc reactor over his failing body, and Tony feels so, so proud.

“Good boy,” he breathes, and gathers up all his remaining energy, everything he has in him to smash the glass casing on the ground, restart his own heart. He’s not done with this world yet.

 

**_Three._ **

It had been a good fight, he thinks, long and arduous and one he never thought he’d have to fight – aliens and gods and superspies and monsters and historic figures come to life – but a good fight nonetheless. The team can continue on without him now.

He’s saved the day, gotten the girl, and he has this stunning view to look at – the stars whirling above him, the endless expanse of the cosmos lit up by stunning power of a nuclear bomb. Human achievement’s always astounded him, how people can do so much, create, reach for the sky and then reach even higher.

And now the whole universe knows it.

“You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play,” Rogers had said on the helicarrier, glaring down at him, the blue eyes Howard had spent the better part of two decades raving about gone hard and unforgiving. Tony should’ve known better than to get his hopes up. He’s never been a team player, but god had he wanted, _ached_ for it.

Tony closes his eyes. He’s done at least this one good thing in his life. Stopped an alien invasion. Saved New York. It’s an ending he can accept. He just wishes he had gotten to talk to Pepper one last time, just wishes he didn’t have to die alone, literal light-years away from everything he’s ever known and tried to protect. And there’s so much he still wants to do, so many things he’s leaving behind. He’s not ready.

He falls as the suit’s power flickers, his eyelids still burning with the imprint of light and power. There’s still so much he has to do, so much he can do, but maybe, he thinks, trying to justify it to himself more than anything, maybe just this once, even if he’s not ready, it’ll be okay.

He takes one final breath, braces for the end –

And wakes up in the streets of New York, Hulk’s roar echoing in his ears, staring up into the face of the man he’s spent the majority of his life looking up to as the paragon for a hero, and a Norse god – the stuff of legends, of myth – standing over him.

He’s alive, he’s alive, he’ll live to see the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next. They all made it through somehow, and the island’s still floating, most of the buildings still standing, and they’re alive, god.

He can’t help but crack a joke, because it’s all more than he could have ever asked for.

 

**_Four._ **

Siberia is cold. Even if he gets out of here and leaves the whole place behind, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget the way the cold burrows into his very bones, the way he can feel the ice invading his lungs when he inhales, every breath another puncture wound. He should get up, he thinks, but he can’t quite find the strength for it.

It would be so easy to die here. Close his eyes, let go of the iron-tight grip he has on life, stay on this cold concrete floor in the middle of the bunker that created that which would kill his parents, leave his corpse to freeze and rot a million miles from home. Not that he knows what home is, now. He doesn’t have anything, not anymore. There’s no Pepper, no Avengers. Nothing. He barely even has Iron Man.   

He’s spent so long playing at being a hero, but maybe Steve is right. Maybe he’s not cut out for this after all. What was he trying to do, dressing up in a metal suit and pretending he had something meaningful to do in it?

He doesn’t blame Steve. He thinks he’d do the same, if it was the other way around. But it wasn’t, and it isn’t, and here they are now.

“So was I,” Tony had said to Steve, and he had really thought he’d found something. A family. Friendships, at the very least, people who would at least try to stick by him when it mattered most. And yet, he still knew the moment the Accords arrived on his desk that it would drive them apart, be another sticking point in the thousand and one ways Tony couldn’t be a hero, but he’d hoped. He’d hoped, god damn it, and look where he’d ended up: alone, half his friends in prison, having driven them all away. It’d be only fitting to let himself die here.

But as much as he wants to, he can’t. He has responsibilities. He can’t just leave Secretary Ross and the rest of those war hawks to do whatever they want. Tony has to stay and act as a guiding hand for the entire superhero community - the community whose face he became the moment he stepped up onto that podium and told the world who he is. He has to make up for what he’s done to Rhodey. He has to find a way to protect the kid, and all the other kids that will inevitably come after him. And he can’t do that without getting up and getting home.

When he does, he avoids looking at the shield, at its red white and blue surface tarnished and ruined, left at his feet as a pittance. It’s not something that he deserves either, not after all he’s done. He takes it back with him anyway.

 

**_Five._ **

It’s his fault. Thanos was right there, the glove was almost off, Tony had drawn blood, and they could have stopped him. And Strange – he gave up the Time Stone. He gave it up for Tony, when he said that he wouldn’t.

And now.

And now, Tony’s crying, arms still wrapped around the shadow of Peter Parker, disintegrated right before his eyes, the rest of the team before that. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but it was always supposed to be his name finishing that sentence. Not a teenager barely starting out, who hasn’t made the mistakes he’s made, hasn’t even had the chance, who still has so much to live for.

The air on Titan must be thin, or poisonous, or something, because he can barely breathe, and the breaths he does manage to get in burn and choke at his throat. The wound in his side throbs, has him gasping with pain even despite the nanites he’d used to patch it up, and he remembers staring at the glow of the gauntlet, at the clench and flex of the metal, thinking to himself, this is it. He’s going to die not having changed a damn thing. Death would be a welcome embrace at this point. Of all the people in the world, why is he still alive? Why not the kid, why not Strange?

He licks his dry, dry lips, stares at the dust still collected on his hands. Pieces of Peter Parker, the only thing he has left of him. Tony is the one that got him on that ship, the one that took him to that airport, and Peter died because of him. He knew, four years ago in that Hydra bunker, that it would end like this, that it’d end with everyone he ever knew dead and him achingly, painfully alive to watch. There was Ultron, and there were the Accords, and by the end he was grasping at straws and hoping, hoping that he’d been wrong.

Cassandra at the temple, snakes whispering in her ears, wanting nothing more than to be able to ignore their prophecies. He’s read the classics, never given a single thought to the myth, but right here, right now, he thinks he’s never understood someone better.

A million miles from home. He’s got to – he stumbles to his feet – there has to be some way the Guardians got here, they had a ship, didn’t they, and he needs to find it and make his way home, find a way to fix this. Back there, fighting Thanos, Thanos had known him, and Tony had declared, desperate and determined, “My only curse is you.” It’s his responsibility. He made that decision when he put on the suit.

He made a promise, one he intends on keeping. For the kid, who he told he would help keep safe. For Pepper, who he left behind once before and can’t leave behind again. For the doctor and the Guardians. For all the people on Earth, in the whole galaxy, left behind.

For his own peace of mind, if nothing else.

 

**_\+ one._ **

Tony always knew he’d die in the suit. From the minute he woke up in that cave in Afghanistan, when he was submerged under the water, when he drew up the first plans, when he looked into Yinsen’s eyes as Yinsen died, when he crashed down into the sand in the desert. When he first flew, JARVIS in his ear, looking across the sand and the surf, the stars above him, the waves below him, and near endless possibilities ahead of him.

God, it seems like a thousand years ago.

That first press conference, looking across a crowd who’d been using him all his life, holding the cue cards that would let him hide and run away from confronting the realities of who he is now. It would’ve been a safer life, he thinks.

“I am Iron Man,” he had said what feels like a lifetime ago. And as the power of the Infinity Stones courses through his veins, as he looks Thanos dead in the eye, blood running down the side of his face, head held high and defiant, knowing what he has to do and what he’ll have to give up to do it, he says, “I am Iron Man.”

And he snaps.

It turns out dying is more peaceful than he ever could have expected.  

There’s a lot of reasons he should have died in Afghanistan, but he didn’t. Why he should have died with Obie, with the palladium poisoning, with the nuke, extremis, Ultron, the Accords, on Titan. But he didn’t, and it’s all led up to this moment, surrounded by the people he’s helped over the years, everyone he’s ever cared about.

Tony tries to memorize their faces, but his vision is growing dark. He wants – he wants. He wants to live, still, even here at the end. He wants to help raise Morgan, watch her grow up, wants to teach Peter and Harley and all the new recruits how to not make the same mistakes he did, wants to help rebuild, to guide the new world that’ll come after this one. He wonders if that makes him a coward.

He feels sluggish. Probably a side effect of harnessing the full, unfettered power of the universe in the palm of his hand. If he had the energy, he would laugh. They’re all around him, Peter and Rhodey and Pepper and the rest of the Avengers, those he knows well and those he doesn’t, to give comfort while he can still have it.

“We’re going to be okay,” Pepper says, her hand on his face, as gentle as ever.

And he believes it. They’re going to be okay. Morgan will grow up, knowing that she’s loved in a way he never did. The Avengers can and will continue on, helping the world, sometimes saving it. They’ll be fine. Tony’s done all he can.

Tony reaches up, covers her hand with his, right over the arc reactor. His heart. It’s all blurring together now. God, who would have imagined, all those years ago, Pepper elbow-deep in his chest, replacing the arc reactor only because Tony couldn’t do it himself, laughing and joking to themselves at the absurdity of it. But now look at him – 15 years later, having traveled the stars and the galaxy, and the most beautiful thing Tony’s ever seen is still Pepper’s face, her aching, gentle smile.

“You can rest now.”

He’s done good, he thinks, as the world slowly fades around him. He didn’t waste his life.

Tony can rest.

 

 

 

(Somewhere else, Tony blinks up at the ever-wry, softly smiling face of Natasha Romanoff. She stretches out a hand to him, her hair over her shoulder, a splash of bright red color that feels oddly comforting. “Hey,” she says, “you alright?”

There’s a flash of pain, but it’s gone as quickly as it had come, like it was never there. Tony grins and takes her hand in his, letting her pull him up onto his feet.

“Always.”)

  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [nat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nat_cat) for beta-ing and letting me cry about tony stark all over her. 
> 
> i'm on tumblr at [duckmoles](https://duckmoles.tumblr.com) and also everywhere else.


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